[SuperEddzz]

I am no audiophile, but I am an aspiring one (whether or not that is a good thing is a topic for elsewhere, I'm sure) ... Anyways, I was just pondering - what file format does everyone encode in? My iTunes library is currently set to AAC at 192kbps - they sound great to me, but I'm certain they could probably sound better?!
 
What do all you guys use? Which format provides a fine balance between quality and file-size? Cheers.

 

[pekingduck]

CD -> FLAC for archival purposes
ALAC for playback on my Macbook 
192kbps AAC for iPhone
 
I doubt I can tell the difference between AAC and FLAC but disk space is cheap these days 

 

[trog]

FLAC directly from CDs 

 

[SuperEddzz]

@pekingduck - how do you store those files? Do you keep your AACs separate from your ALACs - different folders? 

 

[pekingduck]

I used to maintain two different libraries and it's a PITA! However, the latest iTunes can convert higher bit rate songs to 128,192 or 256kbps automatically when syncing music to your iDevices..
 
P.S.: Older versions also have this feature but it's restricted to 128kbps only.
 
Quote:

@pekingduck - how do you store those files? Do you keep your AACs separate from your ALACs - different folders? 

 
 

 

[SuperEddzz]

Would you advise then that I use the iTunes encoder to convert my 3292 songs in ALACs?

 

[skamp]

Converting your AACs to ALAC will not increase their quality in any way. It would only be a waste of space. When transcoding, you can only maintain quality (lossless) or degrade it (lossy).

 

[Mauricio]

Most of my CDs on Apple lossless in one laptop and iPod.  A limited number of my CDs on FLAC on another laptop.

 

[tevez32]

Hi SuperEddzz,
 
I use DBpoweramp CD Ripper's Multi Encoder feature to extract audio from my CDs into FLAC, Aiff, MP3, and ALAC.  I am considering to scale it down to just FLAC and ALAC.   I store the files on a local 2 TB disk on my desktop PC where they go into different folders:
 
Q:\Audio
  |-00-flac\
  |      |-Art of Noise, The\
  |             |-The Seduction of Claude Debussy
  |                  |-01 - Art of Noise, The - The Seduction of Claude Debussy - Il Pleure (At the Turn of the Century).flac
  |                  |-02 - Art of Noise, The - The Seduction of Claude Debussy - Born on a Sunday.flac
  |                  | ... and so on... 
  |
  |-01-aiff\
  |-02-mp3\
  |-03-alac\
  
As you are using iTunes I would recommend extracting your audio to ALAC because it is the best quality and uses some compression to save on disk capacity, it stores the artist / song information, and iTunes can import it.  It is best to keep a copy that is highest quality so then you can always convert it to a more space efficient format as needed, as Pekingduck pointed out.  
 
Be sure to start your conversion process from CDs as converting form MP3s to a ALAC won't provide in any benifits.... you'll just use more storage capacity on your disk.  (as pointed out by skamp .. but I felt it was worth repeating)
 
 
 
 

 

[spoonstar]

I used V0 mp3 for the longest time, but now I'm in the process of re-ripping all my CDs to FLAC. I use Exact Audio Copy.

 

[Roller]

FLAC, obviously, for archiving purposes, maintaining the original untouched. If I use some device that doesn't support it, then I'll encode into some lossy format such as mp3 CBR, but always from untouched files.
 
And as mentioned before, grabbing a lossy format such as mp3 or AAC and encoding it to lossless formats such as FLAC, AIFF or ALAC is a bad idea as no quality is gained but final files are unneccessarily larger.

 

[mikeaj]

I do FLAC for archive on the computer, but latest AoTuV Vorbis -q8 (~256 kbps) for the phone, which is probably overkill on most material and considering my portable setup isn't exactly the stuff of audiophile legends.  AAC is fine too, and even mp3 with a good encoder like LAME.
 
This is kind of inefficient, but I keep separate directories: one being the archive and the other being the mirror of the phone with the lossy encodes.  I need to decide what goes on there anyway.

 

[snoopy007]

FLAC on the computer.
 
mp3 vbr0 using LAME for the best compatibility and still pretty good quality across a range of devices.

 

[skamp]

FLAC --best on the laptop.

On my Galaxy Nexus, it changes with my moods. Before, I was using LossyFLAC. Awesome PCM pre-processor if you ask me. But it was taking too much space, so I switched to Ogg Vorbis AoTuV (-q 8). Then yesterday I was bored so I switched to Musepack (--standard), which is a great lossy codec too.

 

[brokenthumb]

FLAC using EAC